Don’t Go To Dubai With Doobie In Your Shoes: A Public Service Announcement From Houstoned Rocks

If this article is any indication, any of you local musos playing oil company shindigs in Halliburton’s new hometown and our upstart rival as the energy capital of the world had better not attend or play any jam band shows, eat at Last Concert, or go anywhere near Devin the Dude in the weeks before you head to the airport:

“A father-of-three who was found with a microscopic speck of cannabis stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes has been sentenced to four years in a Dubai prison.

Keith Brown, a council youth development officer, was traveling through the United Arab Emirates on his way back to England when he was stopped as he walked through Dubai's main airport.

A search by customs officials uncovered a speck of cannabis weighing just 0.003g - so small it would be invisible to the naked eye and weighing less than a grain of sugar - on the tread of one of his shoes.”

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When I spent a few days of R&R from kibbutz duty in the Sinai snorkeling resort of Dahab, shopkeepers would get you high for free so they could sell you more candy and cheap trinkets.

Hell, in the interest of journalistic enquiry, I even purchased a small bag of the stuff myself – the local Bedouins had a “camel-ride” service that was just a front for selling weed. They would put you on a camel, lead you back into the dunes and sell you a bag of shake for mad cash. (It was these guys.)

Local rappers take note: Dubai law likewise frowns on lean. Possession of codeine will also get you four years. And the same goes for some cold medicines, so you better leave those at home.

Come to think of it, why not just skip Dubai this tour? After all, in the immortal words of Spinal Tap manager Ian Faith, “it’s not a big college town.” – John Nova Lomax

The Houston Press is a nationally award-winning, 28-year-old publication ruled by endless curiosity, a certain amount of irreverence, the desire to get to the truth and to point out the absurd as well as the glorious.